Arctic Sea Ice is Falling off a Cliff and it May Not Survive The Summer

Near zero sea ice by the end of melt season. The dreaded Blue Ocean Event. Something that appears more and more likely to happen during 2016 with each passing day.

These are the kinds of climate-wrecking phase changes in the Arctic people have been worrying about since sea ice extent, area, and volume achieved gut-wrenching plunges during 2007 and 2012. Plunges that were far faster than sea ice melt rates predicted by model runs and by the then scientific consensus on how the Arctic Ocean ice would respond to human-forced warming this Century. For back during the first decade of the the 21st Century the mainstream scientific view was that Arctic sea ice would be about in the range that it is today by around 2070 or 2080. And that we wouldn’t be contemplating the possibility of zero or near zero sea ice until the end of this Century.

But the amazing ability of an unconscionable fossil fuel emission to rapidly transform our world for the worst appears now to outweigh that cautious science. For during 2016, the Arctic is experiencing a record warm year like never before. Average temperatures over the region have been hitting unprecedented ranges. Temperatures that — when one who understands the sensitive nature of the Arctic looks at them — inspires feelings of dislocation and disbelief. For our Arctic sea ice coverage has been consistently in record low ranges throughout Winter, it has been following a steepening curve of loss since April, and it now appears to have started to fall off a cliff. Severe losses that are likely to both impact the Jet Stream and extreme weather formation in the Northern Hemisphere throughout the Spring and Summer of 2016.

Melting more than Two Weeks Faster than the Early 2000s

Since April 27th, according to a record of sea ice extent provided by JAXA, daily rates of sea ice loss have been in the range of 75,000 square kilometers for every 24 hour period. That’s 300,000 square kilometers of sea ice, or an area the size of New Mexico, lost in just four days. Only during 2015 have we ever seen such similarly rapid rates of loss for this time of year.

(We’ve never seen early season sea ice losses like this before. Severe sea ice losses of this variety can help to generate strong ridges and extreme heatwaves like the one we now see affecting India and Southeast Asia. Image source: JAXA.)

However, this excessive rate of loss is occurring across an Arctic region that features dramatically less ice (exceeding the 2015 mark for the same day by about 360,000 square kilometers) than any other comparable year for the same day. In essence, extent melt is now more than a week ahead of any other previous year. It is two and half weeks ahead of melt rates during the 2000s. And this year’s rate of decline is steepening.

Current melt rates, if maintained throughout summer, would wipe out practically all the ice. And, worryingly, this is a distinct possibility given the severely weakened state of the ice, the large areas of dark, open water available to absorb the sun’s rays as Summer progresses, and given the fact that Arctic heat is continuing in extreme record warm ranges. Furthermore, melt rates tend to seasonally steepen starting by mid June. So rapidly ramping rates of loss seen now, at the end of April and through to the start of May, may see further acceleration as more and more direct sunlight keeps falling on already large exposed areas of dark, heat-absorbing water.

Huge Holes in the Beaufort

All throughout the Arctic Basin, these sunlight-absorbing regions take up far more area than is typical. The Bering has melted very early. Baffin Bay is greatly withdrawn from typical years. Hudson Bay is starting to break up. The Barents and Greenland seas feature far more open water than is typical. However, there is no region showing more dramatic early season losses than the Beaufort.

(This Beaufort sea has never looked so bad off so early in the year. High amplitude waves in the Jet Stream continue to deliver record warmth, warm, wet winds, and record sea ice melt to this region of the Arctic. For reference, bottom of frame in this image is around 600 miles. The wispy threads you see in the image is cloud cover, the sections of solid white are snow and ice. And the blue you see is the open waters of the Arctic Ocean. Open water gap size in the widest sections is now more than 150 miles. Image source: LANCE-MODIS.)

There, ice continues to rapidly recede away from the Arctic Ocean shores of the Mackenzie Delta and the Canadian Archipelago — where a large gap has opened up in the sea ice. Now ranging from 70-150 miles in width, this area of open water consistently sees surface temperatures warm enough to melt sea ice (above 28 F or about -2 C).

This great body of open water the size of a sea in itself has now created a new early season edge zone for the ice. A place where a kind of mini-dipole can emerge between the more rapidly warming water surfaces and the cooler, reflective ice. Such a zone will tend to be a magnet for storms. And a low pressure system is expected to ride up an extreme bulge in the Jet Stream over Alaska and Canada and on into this Arctic zone over the next few days. Storms of this kind tend to hasten melt and break up of ice in the edge zones by generating waves, by pulling in warmer airs from the south, or by dropping liquid precipitation along the melting ice edge. And the fact that this kind of dynamic is setting up in the Beaufort in early May is nothing short of extraordinary.

Arctic Heat Like We’ve Never Seen Before

Further to the north, high pressure is expected to continue to dominate over the next seven days. This will generate further compaction of the already weak ice even as it allows more and more sunlight to fall over that greatly thinned white veil.

(The Arctic is now so warm that this graph is now too small to capture the excession of extreme heat in the region. Freezing degree days are now more than 1,000 less than during a typical year and the already much warmer than normal 1980 to 2000 period. Image source: CIRES.)

Temperatures for the Arctic are expected to range between 2.5 and 3.5 C above average over the next seven days. Very warm conditions that will continue to hammer freezing degree day totals that have now exceeded an unprecedented -1000 since the start of the year in the High Arctic region above the 80 degree North Latitude Line. In layman’s terms, the less freezing degree days the Arctic experiences, the closer it is to melting. And losing 1000 freezing degree days is like removing the coldest month of Winter entirely from the heat balance equation in this highest Latitude region of the Northern Hemisphere.

From just about every indicator, we find that the Arctic sea ice is being hit by heat like never before. And the disturbing precipitous early season losses we now see in combination with the excessive, extreme warmth and melt accelerating weather patterns are likely to continue to reinforce a trend of record losses. Such low sea ice measures will also tend to wrench weather patterns around the globe — providing zones for extreme heatwaves and droughts along the ridge lines and related warm wind invasions of the Arctic that will tend to develop all while generating risk of record precipitation events in the trough zones. To this point, the North American West is again setting up for just such a zonal heatwave pattern. Extreme heat building up in India and Southeast Asia also appears to be following a similar northward advance.

Sarc. Hat tip to Exxon Mobile (For its failure to report scientific findings on the impacts of climate change, and for its never-ending political and media campaign aimed at preventing effective climate change mitigation policy over the past 40+ years)

Syd Bridges

The Exxon-Mobil Mass Extinction. We’ve brought you the most important event, not only in human history, but since the the end of the Mesozoic! And, we could yet top the Permo-Triassic extinction too. Not only is your mortgage under water, but so is your house! Enjoy the bracing sea air of a Canfield Ocean anywhere in the world. Remember, these benefits have been brought to you, courtesy of Exxon-Mobil, the Double Cross Company!

Charles Lochbryn

Cracked and dislodged sea ice is more at whim of wind and weather. So if the right kind of dipole sets up with highs in the Central Arctic as we have now and lows in the Barents as we have now, then Fram export will be enhanced.

It’s worth noting that Fram export has been very strong throughout Winter 2015-2016.

wili

Snow cover in the Northern Hemisphere has been low this spring and is melting early. IIRC, that is one of the few indicators this early for accurately predicting greater than normal melt out at the end of the season, since, among other things, it means that the rivers that flow north into the Arctic Ocean will be warmer earlier.

wili

It’s really hard to overstate the significance of what we are about to witness (well, witness less reliably, now that in our great ‘wisdom’ we have let one of the few satellites covering the area go down without a ready replacement in the wings, as you covered so admirably, earlier).

Speaking of space, for examples, this change in the earth’s ice cover is something we are changing on the planet that would be visible by an alien with a reasonably good telescope from millions of miles away.

And of course the consequences for terrestrial and sub-sea carbon feedbacks…I shudder to contemplate.

Colorado Bob

” And of course the consequences for terrestrial and sub-sea carbon feedbacks…I shudder to contemplate.”

The Siberian craters popping off like corn in a theater , and the off shore ocean fizzling like a glass of Alak-Seltzer ?
It’s not going to be a silent sort of thing when it really gets rolling . I expect it to be really kinetic.
It dawned on me sometime back, that one day some Russian ship is going to sail into this someday and ignite a rather large cloud of methane that is laying close to the surface, because the air is still, and a cap in the atmosphere is in place.

Cate

Matthew

wili

Yeah, Matthew, the levels of complexity can be pretty mind boggling. In the early stages of melt, I remember that people were detecting mixing much deeper than they had anticipated, until they realized that icebergs–from the once nearly ubiquitous, now shattered thick ice–were responsible: The small bit above the water line was acting like a sail when the wind blew, and it cause the deeper part below to wobble back and forth, mixing the deeper warmer water more rapidly up to the surface.

The feedbacks really sometimes seem unpredictable, sometimes. That’s certainly not what I would have thought of. (This is all based on my increasingly foggy memory, though, so don’t quote me on it.)

Abel Adamski

A popular internet meme runs something like “melt was similar back in…”, usually referring to some arbitrary period in the 1920s or 30s. Well, unsurprisingly, there really are quite good records from then, and, unsurprisingly, they show nothing remotely like current ice conditions:

Then from there we go to the DMI records from 1896 to the year before WW11

Cate

Rereading this over and over: Arctic sea ice is today in the range predicted, in the early 21st century, for 2070/2080.

We really cannot grasp how fast this is coming at us.

Excellent post, Robert. Thank you.

PS A polar bear was shot by police on Fogo Island, off the NE coast of Newfoundland today, as it charged a group of residents. Bears are uncommon but seasonal visitors to Fogo, as they follow the harp seal herds that whelp on the drift ice in the Labrador Current. But the ice edge on “the front” is well north of Newfoundland today, so it’s blue water to the horizon. Poor bear would have had a long swim ahead of it.

jgnfld

I live in St. John’s, Newfoundland. The ice pack rarely reaches here any more like it used to in the 80s and before. The change is dramatic as we were near the former southern limit of the pack and appear to be below that limit now. Fogo, is well north and much closer to the Labrador Current and should continue to get pack ice for a while yet, I would assume, though as the previous poster notes, the pack right now is a good swim away http://ice-glaces.ec.gc.ca/cgi-bin/getprod.pl?prodid=WIS27CT,WIS27ECT,WIS27NCCT&wrap=1&lang=en It was right up to land, though, a week ago or so..

Polar bears were not uncommon annual occurrences then. One was tranquilized mere blocks away from where I sit now.

Cate

jgnfld, I’m in Central NL, and as you know, the proximity of drift ice to shore on the NE coast depends largely on wind. A lot of W or SW wind keeps the ice offshore, while NE winds packs it in to land. We have had very little NE wind this winter here on the NE coast, apart from a handful of big storms. The Environment Canada ice charts now show the ice edge receding quite definitively towards the N and it will take sustained N or NE winds to bring it onshore again. Which of course, we can get quite easily—it’s only May!😀

Andy in SD

I’ve known many Newfies in my time (since the 70’s). Solid, loyal, hard working, trustworthy, those are the words that come to mind when I think of Newfies. I’ve never known a Newfie to be untrustworthy, ever.

Cate

A little heads-up here: the term “Newfie” has quite a conflicted history and is still controversial among Newfoundlanders. While some of us don’t mind it or will politely ignore the faux pas when a “mainlander” uses the term, many still consider it “the other N-word.”

Cate

Oh wow, yes, thanks for the mention of that too.😀 I was living in Lewisporte that day, just a half hour from the airport at Gander where dozens of flights got grounded. We were one of several towns that closed the schools and opened the gyms, service clubs, and our homes to stranded travellers (without luggage!) for three days—all while the horrible news from the US was unfolding on our TV screens. Rich and poor, famous and nobodies, all bunked together on army camp-cots in the gyms and were fed by various community groups. It was like something out of time—–surreal. Lifelong friendships were made in those strange and beautiful days.😀

Andy in SD

Bozza

wili

I don’t know about the official designation, but I’m focused on the thickest ice left in the Arctic Ocean–the now rather thin strip of 5+ meter ice (coded black here) that used to dominate nearly half of that sea.

“This week is the six-year anniversary of the BP Deepwater Horizon explosion and spill in the Gulf of Mexico, one of the most cataclysmic manmade environmental disasters during President Obama’s time in office.

Taking a lesson from that catastrophe, Obama administration officials recently unveiled a draft offshore drilling plan that will keep the Atlantic Ocean off limits to oil drilling rigs at least through 2022. This welcome decision is major step forward that advances the president’s unprecedented commitment to taking meaningful action on climate change.

But at the same time, the federal government’s proposed five-year leasing plan leaves the door open to more offshore oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico and the Arctic Ocean. This would be a serious mistake, taking us in the wrong direction in combating climate change and placing communities and irreplaceable wildlife at risk…”

Colorado Bob

California Gov. Jerry Brown (D) hit back at criticism over his state’s minimum wage increase from Florida Gov. Rick Scott (R) on Monday, telling Scott to “stop the silly political stunts” and instead focus on his state’s struggle with climate change.

In April, Scott’s administration released a radio ad urging California businesses to consider moving to Florida to avoid the state’s new wage floor, which will reach $15 an hour by 2022. Scott then announced he would travel to California himself and personally court businesses in the state.

In a letter responding to Scott, Brown highlighted a 2015 report focusing on the effects of global warming in the southeastern U.S., including Florida. ﻿ ……………… “While you’re enjoying a stroll on one of California’s beautiful beaches this week, don’t stick your head in the sand. Take a few minutes to read the rest of this report,” Brown wrote in his letter to Scott. “There’s no time to waste.”

Colorado Bob

The report Brown mentioned was commissioned by the Risky Business Project, a coalition started by former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, billionaire hedge fund manager-turned-climate activist Tom Steyer and former Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson. The group aims to highlight climate change’s impact on the U.S. economy.

According to the Risky Business Project’s analysis, Florida is already facing “serious risks” from flooding and storms, and climate change will only exacerbate those threats.

“By 2030, up to $69 billion in coastal property will likely be at risk of inundation at high tide that is not at risk today,” reads the report.

Colorado Bob

Wharf Rat

Rat was gonna vote for Bernie, but he’s managed to lose me over the last month or so, beginning with his “Hillary is unqualified.” I’ll be writing in Jerry. I think it’ll be the 5th time I’ve voted for him in the primary.

Colorado Bob

Developed by the University of Maryland School of Public Health’s Maryland Institute for Applied Environmental Health in collaboration with the Maryland Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, the report examines the relationship between exposure to extreme weather events and risk of selected health outcomes including food and waterborne illnesses (caused by Salmonella and Campylobacter), hospitalization for heart attacks and asthma, and motor vehicle accidents. Using historical climate data along with health data, researchers were able to describe relationships between exposure to extreme events and risk of these selected diseases. These data, along with the climate projections, were used to calculate health burdens among Marylanders in future decades.

Colorado Bob

Cate

CB, the east coast seal fishery has learned to keep a low profile these days, although there is a new and growing local market, here in Newfoundland in particular, in both seal meat for fine/locavore/wild dining and sealskin products—a far cry from the old days of the brutal “white-coat” hunt, which has been banned for decades.

DFO (Dept of Fisheries and Oceans) Canada has some good info on seal populations here:

The harp seal population, the traditional focus of the Newfoundland hunt, is healthy, far healthier than the populations of its main predators, in fact—-which includes polar bears and the sealers themselves.

The Canadian Sealers Association has a self-named website and a FB page if you are interested in finding out more about how this traditional industry is remaking itself, supporting traditional livelihoods, and nourishing our small fishing outports.

Andy in SD

All said, the population management for seals has been very well maintained for 40+ years that I am aware of.

If one tosses out the Bridget Bardot photo ops (remember those!) and looks simply at management of a wild life / resource I think they have done incredibly well compared to , say that west coast Salmon, or what was done with buffalo.

But salmon don’t have cute faces like kittens.

And of course for anyone ripping on that whole seal population / harvest management…as you take your Omega-3 tablets or other such supplements, they do come from that hunt as do many other products you use.

Cate

Ah yes, Bardot: she was one of many celebs who kept the IFAW coffers topped up by raging against the seal hunt. I think a few PETA folks still attempt to stage die-ins in Trafalgar Square, dressed in fake white fur. It was as predictable as the ice used to be: but a real nuisance for the sealers themselves, who were simply trying to earn a wage and feed their families. Come every March, come the world media and the photogenic princess de jour to “save the seals.” It was quite the circus there for a couple of decades. Sir Paul’s crazy then-wife Heather tried to put her, um, foot in it there a few years ago and revive all the blood and gore of it, but she was laughed off the stage.

Btw, Anthony Bourdain is a big supporter of the seal hunt, for all the right reasons.🙂

JPL

DT, this is a little off topic but a few weeks ago you posted a link on how Tacoma, WA was poised to become perhaps the major oil-by-rail epicenter of the US. Don’t know if you caught this or not, but *that very day* an oil train derailed in Tacoma:

The federal government quietly spent $75-million to settle with victims and creditors affected by the Lac-Mégantic rail disaster — a contribution that also shielded it from lawsuits related to the deadly crash.

Former transport minister Lisa Raitt said the deal, which involved 24 other defendants who settled, was under negotiation before her Conservatives lost the October election to the Liberals.

The Liberals have refused to reveal how much the government gave to the $460-million settlement fund, even though at least two parties accused of wrongdoing in the deadly Quebec derailment disclosed their contributions.

– Canada: I sure wish Rene Levesque was alive today. He knew how to speak to the heart of the matters before him
.
Rene Levesque, Ex-Premier of Quebec, Dies at 65#
By JOHN F. BURNS, Special to the New York Times
Published: November 3, 1987

Colorado Bob

redskylite

Ryan in New England

Great post, Robert. The speed and scale of the changes in the Arctic are hard to even get my head around. How this can be completely ignored by the media and majority of the population is beyond my comprehension. What makes my blood boil even more is when I encounter the tired old denier meme,”Al Gore (or whomever is the particular target) said there would be no more sea ice by 2016″…yes, and that’s exactly what is happening!! It’s like I live in a world where climate change is real, in your face and having profound impacts, and most others live in some alternate reality where everything is fine. It drives me crazy, and is extremely frustrating.

Colorado Bob

What makes my blood boil even more is when I encounter the tired old denier meme ………….

I got a gut full as well.

I used to post detailed answers, and today I posted 2 on the UPI site.
But I rarely wrote an “answer”, I went and found a paper, a report, an article that made them look foolish.
That’s what I did on the UPI today.

But these day’s I have just 2 standard answers, as I surf.

“I want to thank-you for hacking up the same old right wing fur ball.”

Ryan in New England

On a positive note, the kids battling climate change in court recently racked up another point in the “win” column.

“On Friday, a group of children suing the government for inaction on climate change scored a major victory, as a judge ruled that the Washington State Department of Ecology must deliver an emissions reduction rule by the end of this year. That decision follows another major win in mid-April, when an Oregon judge ruled that a similar lawsuit could go forward despite opposition from the fossil fuel industry.

Previously, King County Superior Court Judge Hollis Hill had denied the Washington state children’s petition, arguing that the Washington Department of Ecology was already in the process of creating an emissions reduction plan. In February, however, the Department of Ecology withdrew its draft plan, paving the way for Friday’s decision, which found that due to the “urgent situation” caused by climate change, “these kids can’t wait.” The decision ordered the Department of Ecology to create an emissions reductions plan by the end of the year.”

redskylite

Increasing forest fire in Northern India, so serious can be seen in space, won’t help the recent measured high CO2 increases neither will it help the remaining Arctic sea ice.

Last night local N.Z T.V news actually mentioned temperatures were at least 2 or 3 degrees above normal for late Autumn, nationwide, no mention of climate change and showed happy swimmers and happy holiday resort cafe owners. No thought for tomorrow (or the next generation), is this really how our species think.

Nepal and parts of northern India are battling their worst forest fires in years that have devastated thousands of hectares of woodland, killed at least 18 people and sent a pall of smoke across the southern Himalayas that can been seen from space.

redskylite

When do they start calling “alarmists”, realists ? and apologize I wonder.

India’s Himalayas are on fire due to high temperatures and low rains

Deadly forest fires across India’s Himalayan state of Uttarakhand have burned more than 2,300 hectares of forests and killed six people. The fires started three months ago, but had increased in intensity in the last few days.

The Himalayas — the sources of India’s water — are burning. The glaciers there are receding. And 330,000,000 people are under water stress due to drought. The one unifying factor here is climate change. If news sources can’t report that then they’re not reporting the news. They may as well be tabloids if they can’t report on the most important issue of our time.

Took a good hard look at the situation last week. It’s pretty amazingly bad. The silver lining is that rice stocks are high and that the US and Russia aren’t getting hit so hard by drought right now. This could change by later this spring, though. Overall, I think the world can weather it with some disruption if the crisis doesn’t last more than a year. After that, the global, rather than regional, food picture starts to look bad with global food prices again spiking. If any of the other major producers gets hit with drought over the coming months, then all bets are off and it’s 2010/2011 all over again.

What’s happening in India and southeast Asia right now is similar to the impacts of the Syrian drought. Farmers are losing their livelihoods and being displaced. Food and water supports are moving away from the localities and are relying more and more on far-flung regions. Water sources are so stressed that some require armed guards. Power stations reliant on water are shut down or forced to operate intermittently.

It will get worse with this election season coming up. The fossil fuel industry will do its best to press the media reset button on climate change denial — especially since the public now appears to have a foggy notion that something is up.

Ryan in New England

To the regulars here, this link might not provide much new information, but I found it to be decent summary of the devastating changes occurring from climate disruption around the globe. It would make a great piece to share with friends/family that are unaware of just how quickly things are progressing, and how widespread the effects are.

Ryan in New England

Ryan in New England

DT, I thought of you when reading this, and figured you would appreciate it. Jeff Masters’ blog points out that one of the fairly immediate benefits of reducing fossil fuel use is the rise in air quality as particulates are removed from the atmosphere. Air pollution leads to many deaths and illnesses every year, and they are completely unnecessary.

Dr. Masters has been exceptional lately. I always enjoy reading his posts which I find both sharp and informative. But I’m glad he’s picked up the torch for emissions reductions as well. Scientists are human beings too. They live in the world that inherits the consequences of our actions just like the rest of us. I think that those who can see clearly have a responsibility to do more than simply report the deteriorating weather/climate/geophysical situation. At some point, a person who’s seeing what’s happening has got to turn around and say — ‘Hey! What’s the matter with you guys! Wake up! Do something! Or else we really are all pretty much screwed!”

They’ll typically report it after the fact, as an afterthought, if they do at all. Or if they do run a big piece, it has tended to be forgotten tomorrow.

A lot of people tend to be very ill informed or to basically know nothing. A buddy of mine last week was giving Leonardo DiCaprio a hard time because he was petitioning the UN to encourage a rapid transition away from fossil fuels. He said something to the effect that Leo was urging us to stop burning fossil fuels. His voice held a tone of incredulity.

My response to him was — ‘what Leo suggests would be wise. We’d be wise to follow it.’

The conversation basically ended at that point.

The problem is that many people have been misinformed like this guy. Even if they understand what’s happening, they can’t really understand what it means to make an effective response. This is due to a general failure on the part of media to responsibly educate the public. So to them, to people in this bubble, they can’t understand why people like us are so concerned or outraged.

Of course, you also have the ideologically blind. But that’s another matter entirely.

Some people can’t be moved. Some people can. And some people move through their own will and motivation. We focus on type 2 and 3.

Dan Borroff

The thermometer on our east facing front porch hit 88 degrees at 3:30PM, probably another high temp record for Seattle. Few residences have AC since it’s rarely this warm even in mid-summer! Also April exceeded the previous record by 3.1 degrees: http://www.nwcn.com/weather/2016-marks-hottest-seattle-april-ever/164774380
Last night we dined outside with friends. I put on a sweater over my short sleeve shirt. On warm dry days the wind off Puget Sound typically drops the temperature rapidly. The Sound in mid-summer is usually 45 degrees so any breeze cools things down rapidly. We’re 90 miles north of Ottowa and Minneapolis and about 400 miles north of NYC.

Dan Borroff

An acquaintance of ours worked (still works?) at the polar research center at the University of Washington. He and his wife have a teenage daughter so there isn’t much “shop talk” at home, freaks them out. He told our friends that the latest research on the Antarctic ice sheets shows that they may rapidly disintegrate. I had the impression that they could collapse rapidly enough to cause disastrous waves. It will be interesting to know more – how rapidly, how soon, etc.

Imagine if this were to play out. How many months or weeks notice would there be for coastal residents? Will this be a game changer?

Steven Blaisdell

At this point I think rapid decay of any ice sheet has to be considered on the table as at least a possibility. There are, of course, many structural differences between a floating ice cap and a land based ice sheet, but the completely unforeseen, extremely rapid decay of the Arctic has to change possibilities and time frames for the Antarctic, regardless of conclusive evidence. At this point it seems not just prudent but necessary to expect worst case scenarios unless there’s a drastic drawdown of CO2, especially considering that what’s occurring now is a result of emissions from 20-30 years ago (unless I’m mistaken).

I don’t see how an effectively ice free Arctic is not a “game changer.” The ice will recover somewhat, it always does, but once the sea effectively opens the number and magnitude of concomitant feedbacks seems to pretty much guarantee a very fast slide to open water and ice trading places as the predominant condition. And this means global disaster through an increasingly rapid, decadal, stepwise collapse of climate systems. Once the ice is gone, even if we’re pulling CO2 out of the air (no evidence this will happen in any magnitude anytime soon) it becomes a cascade of nastiness. A functionally ice free Arctic as soon as 2016 was even a few years ago considered an ‘alarmist’ fantasy; yet here we are. I think Colorado Bob has the instinctual take on our situation pretty much nailed – we are not in good shape, not at all. Things are going to get very, very nasty.

Tsunami type waves from large glacial outburst floods is one of those climate monsters in the closet. It’s an issue that becomes a high risk issue if you have large melt ponds dominating big sections of ice sheets over wide regions during period in which heavy rainfall events over the ice sheets and glaciers occur. After a point, you can get over-topping of glacial melt ponds that run in daisy chain fashion downhill — spilling lake after lake and developing a wave type feature running down the face of the ice sheet. A powerful feature of this kind would also dislodge weakened ice and may ram apart cracks in the ice as it runs toward the ocean.

Evidence of large, tsunami type waves during glacial melt and flood events abound during the last period of rapid melt at the end of the last ice age. And though there’s no definitive science on the issue, it’s one of those risks you most certainly don’t want to ignore. Ice is a weak structure and melt ponds are not a stable feature. The risk increases the weaker the ice becomes and with the increasing proliferation of surface melt, ponding, and rainfall over ice sheets and glaciers.

Steven Blaisdell

“The risk increases the weaker the ice becomes and with the increasing proliferation of surface melt, ponding, and rainfall over ice sheets and glaciers.” All of which we’re currently witnessing, with increasing speed and magnitude.
Reminds me of the extreme, sometimes hard to believe damage large scale flash floods can do to landscapes. Except what you describe is hemispheric in impact instead of a single river valley. Biblical, really (though the flood of Gilgamesh was actually extreme flooding of the Tigris/Euphrates delta, hardly ‘Biblical’ at all; your scenario would truly fit the term).

– I tried some buttons only one time. But it was after eating a over huge farm harvest dinner I had prepared. My stomach got turbulent as my perceptions grew every which way. It was a bit unpleasant for a few hours.
OUT

“For the first time this millennium, growth in carbon emissions has slowed. Indeed, the year 2014 was the first time in 40 years that the planet saw zero growth in emissions. We examine whether this message of progress can be effective in motivating people to engage in mitigation efforts. This question dovetails with commentary suggesting that gloomy messages about climate change risk fatiguing the population, and that alternative approaches are necessary. It is also informed by work suggesting that hope is a motivating force in terms of engaging in collective action and social change. Study 1 (N = 574) showed that negative emotions were strongly related to mitigation motivation and feelings of efficacy, but hope-related emotions had a much weaker relationship with these constructs. In the main experiment (Study 2: N = 431) participants read an optimistic, pessimistic, or neutral message about the rate of progress in reducing global carbon emissions. Relative to the pessimistic message, the optimistic message reduced participants’ sense that climate change represented a risk to them, and the associated feelings of distress. Consequently, the optimistic message was less successful in increasing mitigation motivation than the pessimistic message. In sum, predictions that the optimistic message would increase efficacy did not transpire; concerns that the optimistic message would increase complacency did transpire. Recent progress in curbing global carbon emissions is welcome, but we found no evidence that messages focusing on this progress constitute an effective communication strategy.”

Wili says — hope kills.

But I think a little nuance is required in this line of investigation.

What motivates people is a sense of immediate danger. If you post an article that talks about progress in climate change mitigation, for example, and it gives the impression that danger is now more remote, then this kind of hopeful feature would tend to de-motivate action. The key here is to develop a sense of immediacy, a sense of urgency for continued action. Present articles outlining progress toward climate change mitigation should highlight the fact that bad outcomes are already locked in and that what we’re fighting for now is reducing the level of harm that is coming. That we are now in a situation where constant action, constant improvement of action, and constant preparedness is absolutely necessary.

In this sense, victories in the climate movement should be tempered by what is now a pretty terrible context.

So what I’d say is not that hope kills — but the lack of a sense of urgency kills.

I’d also add that if a source is playing to people’s apathy by telling them that near term human extinction is inevitable and they may as well do nothing — it’s pretty counter-productive.

The most effective strategy in communicating about climate change, therefore, is to look at the most dangerous case and the most likely case and to develop a sense of urgency for a growing response. To defend the progress that has already been made as essential and to fight for still more progress — because it is absolutely necessary.

Paris is a good example of this. If, for example, the world came out and said that the threat of climate change was gone because of the Paris resolution it would not only be a false statement, it would generate apathy. We should characterize such actions as minor victories upon a hard and long path. Because even if all the NDCs are achieved we still get 3 C warming this Century — which is absolutely terrible. And even if somehow we manage to limit warming to 2 C this Century, then bad outcomes are going to hit us pretty amazingly hard. In a geophysical context, warming of 2 C in just 200 years is blindingly fast and enough to wrench ice sheets off their moorings, wreck global weather, push sea level rise faster than at the end of the last ice age, and to set up long term warming of around 4 C even if all greenhouse gas emissions from humans are halted.

The fact that we are in big trouble even if all emissions are halted should be the message that rings clear. But we should also say that it’s absolutely necessary to stop emitting if we’re to have much chance here.

We need to consider this all in context and not just in black and white. In the very real and dire present context, global civilization is in a fight for its life and any action right now just makes that fight more potentially winnable. But there’s almost no way now that climate change does not have an impact upon every person now living on the face of the Earth.

In the end, that’s telling the truth. And ultimately the truth (with its varying shares of hope and pessimism) is the best option when it comes to climate communication.

Colorado Bob

Ryan in New England

I’ve never eaten peyote, but I have tried magic mushrooms (when I was much, much younger). If you’re in a safe, comfortable setting it can be incredible. It definitely provides a different perspective on the world, one that can’t really be captured properly with words. I recently heard about psychologists delivering LSD to patients as a new form of therapy.

sunkensheep

Ok, I read it closer, it’s an integral temperature anomaly in units of degrees celcius. That means the Arctic has stayed warm and the ice and ocean have had less chance to lose heat to the atmosphere, which explanis the low extent and volume gains over winter very well.

redskylite

News of Climate Change in Russia as the Siberian times reports that on the First of May the Ob Sea (a man made lake) is unusually completely free from ice . . . . . . . . . .

OB-serving climate change in Siberia

One local researcher – who drew this to our attention – said: ‘It is my own observation. I often go to the ‘Ob Sea’ in early May and previously there was always ice there, at least ice floats, even when the spring was early. This time it is completely free of ice.

Ryan in New England

The Russian Hydrometeorological Center says that since May 2015 every month has been the warmest in history. February boasted the highest abnormal temperature deviation – more than 1.5C degrees. In March, the temperature deviation in on islands in the Barents Sea was 12C.

– Pardon, but I must use this map graphic to relate something.
– “Someone has to go first…”

– California Coast

Once again, I draw attention to the So Cal Bight (Pt. Conception to the Tijauna River.) ( I consciously try to orient pertinent locales with geo or top-graphical markers. Political boundaries are a bit centric and subject to change.)
This has been my area of focus for the past many years. The years of 2006 – 2012 to the present.
The air of the lower atmosphere grew alarmingly ( at least to me) dense and dirty. Santa Barbara on the Bight was getting dumped on with black soot and traffic related dust.
Air pollution was rampant.

Climate change had to be involved since it was known to be happening — though I didn’t at the time know how.
I did say to more than one person that something very serious and ominous was likely taking place. Also, that Santa Barbara, as far as global climate change or any other such occurrence, I said, “Someone has to go first.”

The coastal cities between Pt. Dume and the border with Mexico started getting chronically burdened by Pm2.5 aerosol particulate even though marine air (No, not aerosol salt.) was historically the main source of air flow.
Airnow maps started reflecting this. In the past the coastal areas would be coded green Good AQ with inland locales having yellow or orange Pm(often with ozone O3 as well)
Only off shore Santa Ana type winds offset that pattern.

It turns out that I may have been quite prescient in my analysis. The So Cal Bight with Santa Barbara near the upper middle of the map is not faring so well and is ahead of the pack for drying out.

Spike

Scotland’s wind power surges ahead – and it’s interesting to see how effective solar is even in a country with low solar resource. This does somewhat splat the arguments of the naysayers who argue that solar is ineffective in the UK. It can clearly play an important role.

From a personal perspective I had a new solar installation in February in the English Midlands, since when I have produced on average almost double my daily electricity use. Will be looking at storage systems next.

I welcome your article above Robert. Still seeing a tendency for some scientists to put down suggestions that the sea ice is potentially facing wipeout sooner rather than later, largely down to a modelling perspective. I remember reading one modeller’s anguished response to the last big melt when he stated that his life’s work had been shown to be utterly erroneous in view of the real world experience. I keep thinking of the loss of volume and old ice, and the rapidly ramping up arctic amplification, and suspect many others will have the same experience in the coming years.

Thanks for the kind thoughts, Spike. And it’s great to hear that, despite huge opposition from the conservatives in England, Scotland is moving rapidly forward on wind and renewables. A hard fight well won. Now the rest of the world needs to get its act together and do the same thing.

As for sea ice volume — PIOMAS tipped into record low ranges by early April. Now DMI is hitting record low ranges as well. So in pretty much all the major volume measures we’re at record low levels heading into this Summer.

So how this worked is that big Ag probably provides advertising revenue for this publication. When the execs at Monsanto saw this cartoon criticizing what is obviously a pretty egregious concentration of wealth among their CEOs, they probably picked up the phone and called the editor who then fired this guy.

Yet one more bit of evidence showing how corrupt organizations who’ve accumulated an excess of power and wealth can use that money to cover up their misdeeds in an active attempt to deceive the public. In this particular case, the cover-up involved abuse of this cartoonist.

We are entering an era of acute personal integrity, where the people who get by in life on associations, power, money, personal gain and comfort – rather than on truth – are increasingly going to be exposed for what they are. These people have always existed in large numbers; the Company Man and the stroker are nothing new. But the new reality makes their way of being in the world now completely pernicious.

They should fly that machine as soon as possible. We should all call Congress and give them a piece of our mind and ask them why a critical piece of climate change resiliency infrastructure has been grounded.

Ryan in New England

Staying up to date on the unfolding climate crisis basically means you are ingesting a constant stream of troubling news and dire forecasts, and it can sometimes lead to a sort of desensitization. Almost like I get used to the idea of permanently losing the natural wonders of this world. Our forests, coral reefs, glaciers, all current coastlines, Winter, countless species, etc.

I just spent a few moments trying to let the reality of what’s happening in the Arctic truly sink in, and the scale and speed of the current changes are absolutely horrifying. This is one of the largest features on the planet, and we have flipped it 180 degrees. As Wili pointed out earlier, the removal of the Arctic ice cap can be seen by aliens in other solar systems (with sophisticated telescopes). The Hubble telescope could see light and dark patches on Pluto, billions of miles away, that were later viewed in greater detail by the New Horizons spacecraft. What was a giant mirror reflecting sunlight is now a black ocean, absorbing unthinkable amounts of energy. It’s one of the most drastic changes I can think of,and it’s happening over a huge potion of the Earth. The icebox of the Northern Hemisphere has been unplugged, and this will have profound implications for weather.

Also, we just pushed our stone past the summit, and it’s about to start rolling down the other side of the mountain we’ve just scaled. The Arctic is already crazy warm this year, and never really had a Winter, and it’s about to absorb lots of energy. The ice that exists is mostly one or two year ice, and will easily melt away, and this pattern will accelerate as the ocean keeps warming. As we all know here, this is a powerful positive feedback, and this year we are witnessing the cycle becoming fully activated. It won’t be long now until every summer is ice free for weeks out of the year.

As Robert pointed out, we are already nearly a century ahead of models from a decade ago, and this year looks to be another major drop in “Arctic death spiral”. The first jaw-dropper was 2007, less than a decade ago, followed just five years later by 2012. In under a decade a major feature of the planet has virtually vanished. Whatever happens this year and next, the ice is already gone.

This should be the lead story on every newspaper or broadcast for the next 6 months straight until everyone appreciates just what the hell is happening!

Cate

Poignant statement, Ryan. I wholeheartedly agree. But if 2012 is any guide, the papers will only report on the event after the fact. The statements will be terse. And there will be little in the way of broader context.

I’m reminded of 3 Mile Island reports when I was a kid. They ran 24/7 while the event was happening and they blanketed the media. Well, what we’ve got with the climate situation is far, far worse than 3 Mile Island. And it’s happening in so, so many places around the world. 60 million people are now at risk of severe hunger, India is suffering its worst drought ever, the Himalayas are burning, Arctic sea ice is at its lowest on record for this time of year, the world hit above 1.5 C preindustrial in many monitors during February and March, Antarctica and Greenland both look like their ice sheets are going swiftly melt and raise sea levels, the UK just got hammered with another worst winter storm period on record, Houston had 2 100 year floods in two years, the Arctic sea ice is at record low levels and heat in the Arctic this year could best be described as insane, the most powerful El Nino, in terms of overall ocean heat content, ever failed to bring even average rains to California, we have Alaska experiencing wildfires in Winter, we have northern Canada experiencing thunderstorms during spring and spring wildfires, we have permafrost starting to vent carbon into the atmosphere and rumors of a growing methane seep from the Arctic Ocean, we have a mass coral bleaching event the likes of which we’ve never seen, we have the oceans visibly losing oxygen content, CO2 levels are their highest in at least 10 million years, and on and on and on. Any one of these would be an emergency worthy of 24/7 coverage — put all together it’s a context of an unprecedented threat to global civilization. It’s as if the Nazis had invaded Poland and the media had put a blurb about it on the back page. It’s just unconscionable.

“In sum, predictions that the optimistic message would increase efficacy did not transpire; concerns that the optimistic message would increase complacency did transpire. Recent progress in curbing global carbon emissions is welcome, but we found no evidence that messages focusing on this progress constitute an effective communication strategy.”

wili

The number of times I’ve argued just this case with friends, family and activists…only to be shut down and shunned as a doomer.

Ultimately, though, the most important thing is accuracy, wherever that takes us (which we get by the bucketful here at rs’s blog!). Also, some idea of what things we know pretty much for certain and what things have relatively larger error bars.

Our numbers for global emissions are not, imho, as reliable as our numbers for atmospheric concentrations of CO2 and other GHGs, which are definitely still going up.

dnem

We’ve all read supposedly authoritative communication theorists arguing essentially the opposite: that people don’t respond to data-driven arguments and that dire messages fall on deaf ears (the authors of the linked study say as much). The difficulty in finding an appropriate communications strategy just underscores the wickedness of the climate problem. There is a lot that is hard-wired in the human psyche that makes responding adequately to our predicament incredibly difficult.

One bit that’s worth pointing out is that the threat response is immediately powerful. But it is also subject to rapid fatigue. Those who work in any emergency response related field experience what is known as compassion fatigue.

I think the above study has some blinds in the sense that a pure hope driven argument results in the notion that no action is necessary, but it doesn’t take into account a longer term motivation of working for a better world. I think that those saying that people don’t respond to data driven arguments and warning of impending trouble fail to understand the fact that people do generally tend to be motivated by threats but that the threat focus of the media has tended to be on things like ISIS or the economy or jobs.

The issue here is to get the right mix of sense of urgency, threat identification, talk about what’s happening now, and vision for a path through this mess.

In any case, I think reporting about severe climate change driven events absolutely has an impact. Sandy, for example, helped to sway public opinion at the end of the last election cycle, for example. And, overall, it has taken what amounts to a media blockade of climate messages to prevent people from fully understanding the problem.

If the media just reported what was happening in real time and how dire the situation now is, it would be a huge motivator for response. We have a huge, huge number of people in the path of this thing and whose lives will be severely negatively effected. They need to be informed. So it’s not just bad communication strategy to not report the dangers. It’s also just amazingly irresponsible.

Glad to hear it (but wait, does that reduce my motivation to keep tweeting? :)). Seems as though there are many different takes on this–I only know what motivates me, and that’s what I tweet, which is mostly the (alarming) science and extreme weather events. Good to know I’m not too off-target, if at all. Thanks for the info.

dnem

I guess it’s all about pushing the needle as best we can with “the right mix.” Public opinion is likely to be as non-linear as the threat itself and I expect a huge wave of climate alarm to sweep through the public eventually. Predicting when is the tough part. It does not appear that finally leaving 1998 and the faux pause in the dust has done it. I’m not convinced an arctic blue ocean event 2016 will either.

In my view, this increased concern will help to generate positive action. But I don’t think it’s anywhere commensurate with the problem. I find it ironic that it’s taken the hottest year on record to get us back to the 2008 level of climate concern. A testament to how powerful the fossil fuel influences have been in shaping public opinion since the Obama election and since some policies that have rolled back fossil fuel emissions have come into being.

You always get this kind of cyclical backlash when it comes to positive policy measures. And the problem is that, with climate change, you need to overcome that cyclic nature to have any kind of effective response. We need to move very rapidly.

So I think the overall concern regarding apathy is certainly warranted. In the mid 1990s, for example, emissions stalled for a while, then went back to a growth path. We can’t afford to have the same thing happen now. If it does, our civilizations have practically zero chance of making it through this century.

Greg

islandraider

It takes a tremendous amount of heat energy to complete a phase change in solid water: 80 Calories of heat energy is necessary to melt 1-gram of ice at 0C into 1-gram of water at 0C. If you apply that same 80 Calories of heat energy to 1-gram of water at 0C, you will heat that 1-gram of water to 80C.

When the ice is gone, when the phase change is complete, all that heat will go into the oceans, warming the waters rapidly. This is the scenario that is unfolding.

JPL

Heck of an article here. The problem is that over the coming years a growing number of regions from South Florida, to the Outer Banks, to Norfolk, Portsmouth, Chesapeake and Virginia Beach, to the Eastern Shore, to Delaware, to New York and Boston and many, many, more communities will all be facing the same issues, the same choices. Stand and face a tide that will grow higher and higher, storms that will grow stronger, possibly the increasing threat of tsunamis, or move whole communities inland.

Given what we’ve already locked in, it appears likely that the size of the climate migration is going to be very vast.

JPL

I’m not so sure that newly resettled communities will be welcomed, either. We’re seeing this play out across Europe with the massive influx of refugees. If communities in less than amazing economic shape are forced to absorb whole new groups of people requiring housing, services, jobs, assistance, etc, it might not be pretty, particularly if the short-fingered vulgarian’s us-versus-them, ‘Make America White Again’ nonsense further metastasizes.

Ryan in New England

You’re right, JPL. The recent influx of climate/war/economic refugees to Europe, while tiny compared to what’s down the road, revealed a reluctance to completely embrace desperate people just looking for a safe place to live. Even the more accepting countries seemed to roll the welcome mat back up once the fear of terrorism spread throughout the region.

Here in America, in a time when net Mexican immigration is about zero, we have crowds screaming to build a wall to keep everyone out, and the Republican presidential nominee says he will build that wall, and ban Muslims. I harbor no illusions that America will welcome millions of climate refugees from places to our south, or anywhere else. While it’s a sad commentary on our society, it’s where we stand right now.

June

“Melting ice wedges can make the ground drop out, driving land subsidence in the warming Arctic…An ice wedge is visible from a tunnel at the army’s Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory…
Massive ice wedges like this one, Romanovsky says, can be found across Alaska’s North Slope and much of the high Arctic. Such wedges form over hundreds or thousands of years, when water seeps into cracks in the permafrost and undergoes repeated frost cracking and ice vein growth. Up on the surface, when the vegetation is thin enough, ice wedges appear as polygonal shapes spanning roughly 15 to 30 meters.

In some parts of Alaska, these ice wedges can comprise 70 to 90 percent of the upper permafrost volume underfoot, and they are melting much faster than scientists expected. The sudden loss in underlying support is causing land slumps that could ultimately put many parts of the Arctic under sea level.”

Yet another in the endless string of scientists saying it’s happening much faster than expected. As Robert commented further up, the irresponsibility of the media in refusing (and at this point it can’t be dismissed as ignorance) to communicate the breathtaking speed of the changes happening now, all over the world, is infuriating. Most people who only rely on MSM have no idea of the scale of changes happening globally. When something is even briefly covered it is treated as a discrete weather event.

California, Arizona and Nevada are back in negotiations about the dwindling Colorado River water supply.
…
For decades, the West’s big reservoirs were like a security blanket, says Anne Castle, the former assistant secretary for water and science at the Interior Department. But the blanket is wearing thin. Under normal conditions, Lake Mead loses 1.2 million acre-feet of water every year to evaporation and deliveries to the Lower Basin states plus Mexico, which amounts to a 12-foot drop. Previously, extra deliveries of water from Lake Powell offset that deficit, but after 16 years of drought and increased water use in the Upper Basin, those extra deliveries are no longer a safe bet.
[ Lake Powell furnishes water to the Navajo generating plant — a mega user of H2O — in Page, AZ.]
“There’s a growing recognition that even these huge reservoirs aren’t sufficient to keep the water supply sustainable anymore,”…https://www.hcn.org/articles/as-lake-mead-sinks-states-agree-to-more-drastic-water-cuts

– Or: “Journalism is printing what someone else does not want printed. Everything else is public relations.” – George Orwell

Steady Death Toll Reflects Ongoing Worldwide Assault on Journalists

As those in the profession broadly defined as “media” once again mark World Press Freedom Day, it is worth recalling the risks incurred by many journalists throughout the world in trying to keep the public informed.

At its best, journalism involves the sort of work that has earned it the sobriquet of the first draft of history. As such, it is the sine qua non for any sort of democratically oriented system of government; for without reliable information, citizens cannot competently participate in the decision-making that creates and sustains the framework within which they carry on their lives.

They do not feel any enmity against me as an individual, nor I against them. They are ‘only doing their duty’, as the saying goes. Most of them, I have no doubt, are kind-hearted law-abiding men who would never dream of committing murder in private life. On the other hand, if one of them succeeds in blowing me to pieces with a well-placed bomb, he will never sleep any the worse for it. He is serving his country, which has the power to absolve him from evil.’
– George Orwell – 1941http://www.k-1.com/Orwell/site/work/essays/lionunicorn.html

Well, I guess in this case it’s publish climate truth or perish as a civilization. But when it comes to climate journalists, it’s absolutely likely that we’ll be targeted by amoral entities whose power and wealth rests in the continued exploitation of harmful fuels.

June

Ryan in New England

Over the years I have grown to appreciate George Orwell more and more, not only as a great writer, but as a prophet. He understood the dynamics between powerful universal human emotions, politics and the desire for control and power. I recently reread 1984 and it’s like reading a newly written drama about modern day Republicans. The surveillance state. Video screens in everyone’s home. Ministry of Truth who fear the truth. Propaganda that creates a scripted reality for the “prols”. A constant state of war and a sense of fear of the other that is always promoted. Control over sexual behaviors. A ruling elite controlling an exploited proletariat.

– This shipping map also represents a lot of (usually high sulfur) oil being burned by these ships.
Factor in the overhead atmospheric aviation condensation trails — and you have a good snapshot of much that effects our climate.

Cate

Grim news from Fort Mac in Alberta. Fire is out of control. Houses are burning, six neighbourhoods being evacuated. Evacuation orders prevent people from going home to gather belonging or pets. Pray everyone stays safe.

Ryan in New England

That’s a scary and sad situation. The beginning of May is a little early for wildfires in that area, isn’t it? I fear this will be one heel of a summer for North America and the Northern Hemisphere in general😦

Ryan in New England

Bill McKibben has some moving words here, rightly pointing out that the world has waited long enough an really needs to start turning up the heat on the small band of companies still profiting from and pushing the use of fossil fuels.

Ryan in New England

The drought and blistering heat, some 20 to 30 degrees Fahrenheit above normal, has claimed 300 lives since early April. Towns on India’s eastern side have been hit with record-setting temperatures — 119.3 degrees in the town of Titlagarh, Orissa, which is the highest temperature ever recorded in that state during April.

Before monsoon rains provide relief in mid-June, India’s subsistence farmers will be incredibly vulnerable to the heat. They’re faced with a dire choice: stay inside and let the crops go to waste or work the land and risk heat stroke. Abandoning the choice altogether, thousands of farmers have migrated to cities in search of jobs — “often leaving elderly and young relatives behind in parched villages,” Reuters reports.

Fires are another concern for local governments. On Friday, one Indian state banned daytime cooking, crop burning, and religious fire rituals after accidental fires killed 79 people. The maximum penalty for defying the ban is one year in jail.

The ban is unprecedented, much like the extreme weather, which senior officials and climate scientists have linked to climate change. “It’s not just an unusually hot summer, it is climate change,” said Harsh Vardhan, the Indian minister of earth sciences, last June.

Abel Adamski

Some excellent articles on the AZOCleantech site.
One for ALL but especially DT and CB
Raindrop Splash Triggers Release of Airborne Organic Particles
“Most of us think of that sweet smell after a storm as the aftereffect of rain that has rinsed the air of pollutants and dust. But it turns out that rain also triggers the release of a mist of particles from wet soils into the air, a finding with consequences of its own for how scientists model our planet’s climate and future.”
“It’s not simply that raindrops hit the ground and dislodge some dirt which flies into the air. Rather, as the rain falls, organic matter in the soil dissolves in puddles that form. As more rain falls, the splashing creates air bubbles which mix with the dissolved matter of the soil. The bubbles float upward and quickly burst, releasing into the air a mist of the soil organic compounds.

In the air, the droplets in the mist dry and their contents become solid glassy organic particles. These tiny spheres — made mostly of carbon, oxygen and nitrogen — are about half a micron wide and disperse through the air, sometimes depositing on the ground almost immediately but usually staying aloft for days or weeks, oftentimes traveling thousands of miles.”

Then a very important piece of research affecting Greenlands Ice.
The effect of atmospheric stratification over the ice reducing melt and snow accumulation via Oxygen/H2O isotopes.
The separating stratifying layer consists of a specific isotope

New Research Reveals Mechanisms Linked to Lack of Surface Melting in Greenland Ice Sheet
Published on May 2, 2016 at 6:44 AM

Study Uncovers Mystery of How Much Snow Piles Up on Greenland Ice Sheet
Published on May 2, 2016 at 6:42 AM

This finding will allow previous estimates of Greenland’s past water balance to be re-evaluated.

“When thinking about climate change, one often thinks about rising global temperatures,” Noone said. “However in Greenland, as like here in Oregon, climate change is also a story of the changing water cycle and how we lose water because evaporation rates are increasing.

“Climate models suggest that as temperatures increase, more precipitation may actually fall in Greenland because warmer air can hold more water. Taken by itself, that could indicate that parts of the ice sheet may grow. However, if the lid becomes increasingly leaky, the evaporation process has become more effective and moisture will escape to the atmosphere.

“The fate of the ice sheet is in the balance,” Noone said. “It becomes a question of which influence is stronger.”

Trigger points, the raindrops as increasingly intense rain events occur and the thermal regulating blanket over the ice sheets

danabanana

These storms, enhanced by open water giving up it’s heat have another implication. In a high pressure area with clockwise rotating air, powering clockwise rotating water, Coriolis veers floating ice and fresher water toward the centre of the gyre. In other words, the historic situation tends to keep the floating layer of fresher, cooler water in the Arctic. If a storm or storms reverse the flow of the ocean below, then in the resulting counter clockwise rotating system, Coriolis pushes surface water away from the centre to be expelled through the Fram and Bearing Straights. It has recently been reported that Greenland ice is grounded deeper than was previously believed. As the warmer deep salty Atlantic water layer rises, it will come into contact with more of this ice, rapidly melting it. Greenland could melt a tad faster than predicted.
In addition, these storms induce large surface waves which induce larger internal waves between water of different densities. These waves break as they reach shallow water just as water-air waves do. This further mixes the layers, decreasing the density gradient. Of course these storms also erode the coast, exposing more permafrost and clathrates. All in all, there are a number of factors just about to come out of the pipeline that could very well accelerate the progress of climate change and it’s effects.